


justice

by Hihoneyimdead



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alcohol, Blind Character, Friendship, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 17:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16916913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hihoneyimdead/pseuds/Hihoneyimdead
Summary: She doesn't figure it out for a month.





	justice

It takes a month before Nott notices. And then it clicks. 

“Caleb? Are you…” she asks, trailing off when he tenses. She swallows, swishes around her flask. “You know…”

“Blind?” Caleb snaps. She flinches, but he apparently doesn’t notice, or maybe he doesn’t care. “ _Ja_. And what of it?”

She blinks. “I meant human, but alright.”

He sighs and leans back against their shared rock, looking up at the stars. He was just pointing some picture things out to her, explaining, Frumpkin lounging on the rock on top of him. But now he doesn’t look like he’s looking. He’s just. Looking. 

She tentatively reaches over and takes his hand, squeezing it as best she can. Really, it’s only a finger or two, but he still smiles. 

“ _Danke_ ,” he quietly says, barely louder than the river on the other side of the rock. She doesn’t know what that means, but it’s probably good. 

“Are all humans as big as you?” she asks after a bit. He snorts and crosses his legs, closing his eyes. 

“My father was taller than me.”

And she gasps, and he smiles and keeps talking until the stars die. 

-

Nott doesn’t eat Frumpkin again. She can’t do that to her boy, not now. And she steals him a cane. And he makes her give it back because “What if she needed it?”. And so she keeps a little spot in her bag for him. It sits between their food money and his book money. How expensive can canes be, anyway? 

-

It’s when they get Jester that Nott asks Caleb if he wants to be fixed. And, judging by the way that he looks at her, it was the wrong question. 

“Well,” he says, scritching Frumpkin under the chin. “No.”

Nott blinks and frowns. “Why? Don’t you, you know…”

“Do I want to see? Of course. I wasn’t born this way, you know. I remember…” he trails off, coming back to himself after a moment. “But I can still see a little. You’re green, Jester is blue, and Mollymauk is everything. It’s not like I am completely in the dark.”

She tilts her head a bit and hops up onto the bed next to him, walking over to inspect his face. His mouth twists. 

“Yeah, but wouldn’t you want to see better? Like you used to?” she asks. She pokes his cheek, and he makes a face. A... _face_. 

He shakes his head and gently shoos her off of the bed. “I’m fine, Nott. It’s an inconvenience, nothing more.”

Nott huffs, because she knows that voice. It’s his voice, the one he uses when he’s trying to lie to her about something that she knows isn’t true. Like when he tried telling her that all humans are as dirty as him (lie), or how his real name is Phillip (lie), or how he wasn’t homesick at all (lie). 

“Caleb…”

But he pulls out his book and stares at a page, eyes going a milky blue. Frumpkin hops off of his shoulder and pads to the open window, and apparently that’s the end of that conversation. 

-

Nott thought that Shakäste would help get Caleb out of that rut, but apparently not. If anything, Caleb looked worse off that night in their room. He kept his face buried in his cat after the drinks and the summoning, and no amount of poking could get him to budge. Except for one point in the night when he got up to go piss or something, but he was already facedown by the time she was awake enough to see him. 

At one point as the sun begins to rise, she hears a quiet sob, but she knows better than to deal with that first thing in the morning. She’ll give it until noon. 

-

Beau is the next to find out. She had poked and prodded until he finally gave, and Nott only hates her a bit for it. 

Now, as they sit in their room, Caleb shakes. He stares at his hands, and Nott doesn’t know if he means to do it. 

“The last thing I remember is watching,” he mumbles. A trail of blue flame traces along his fingertips, and Beau takes a step back. Nott stays put by his side. 

“That’s…” Beau starts, stopping when Caleb opens his mouth a few times, closes it, and swallows. 

He fists his hands and closes his tear-filled eyes. “I remember it. It’s so clear, like it is right in front of me. And I just _stood there_.”

Nott looks at Beau, back at Caleb, and at the floor. She absently swings her legs. 

“I deserve this,” he whispers. Beau opens her mouth, but Nott beats her to it. 

“You didn’t mean to, though.”

He turns to look at her, opening his eyes. This close, she can see the scars just barely visible under the layers of dirt and mud and blood. 

“Oh, Gods,” she says before she can think, and he turns away. 

“ _Ja_. Say what you want, Nott, but I deserve this.”

As soon as Beau is gone, Nott is tackling Caleb around the middle in as big a hug as she can manage, barely managing to get all the way around, and he just sits there, staring at the far wall. 

-

Everyone figures it out eventually. 

Molly leaned down between Caleb and his books to get his attention, but wasn’t seen. With a, _“What are you, blind?”_ and Caleb immediately rushing off to his room, it was obvious. 

Yasha gave him a shave, forgetting to warn him about her sword, but he didn’t notice until halfway through when she remembered to mention it. 

Jester simply asked, probably hearing it from that weird god of hers. She offered to heal his eyes for him, but he politely refused, gripping his mug just a bit too tightly. 

And Fjord...well, not doesn’t exactly know when he found out. But at some point on their trip to the coast, he said that one of his old crewmates was blind and that he knew a few tricks he’d be willing to share. 

-

“Ah,” says Caduceus. He sagely nods, not quite looking like he gets it. 

“You don’t get it,” Nott says. She waves her hands a bit for emphasis. “He won’t get it fixed!”

“No, I understand,” he says. He sits silently for a moment. Then, “Let me put it like this. If you were offered a chance to not be a goblin, would you take it?”

It’s an immediate, _“Yes.”_

Caduceus blinks. “Right. But...alright. Think about it from his perspective. He’s been like this his whole life, hasn’t he?”

She bites her tongue and nods. 

He smiles widely. “There we go!”

He stands and takes both of their cups down to the kitchen, and Nott thinks that he didn’t explain a single thing. 

-

That night as the ship sways gently beneath them, Nott hunkers down for the night. She sets up the floatation devices around their hammocks and swings up onto the top hammock. (She wouldn’t let Caleb have the top one no matter how much he asked. He could fall in the night and break his neck, simple as that.) Caleb and Frumpkin stand in the doorway setting their alarm. 

“Nott?” he asks. 

She takes a swig of her flask. “Yeah?”

“I...don’t let me do it tonight.”

She sits up and looks at him. He’s still crouched with his cat balancing neatly on the top of his head, but she can see his hand shaking. Their room still smells like smoke despite all the fruit she brought up before they left. 

“I won’t,” is all she says. His head jerks in a nod, and he nearly falls out of his hammock when he tries to get in it. She slides down next to him and sprawls across his chest, Frumpkin taking his face. 

He weakly smiles and puts an arm around her. “ _Danke_.”

She knows what that means. Sort of. So she says, “ _Bitte_ ,” just like how he taught her, and neither of them move all night long.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I am not blind, so all of his mannerisms and such as a mixture of canon and what I could find from some brief research. I apologize if I did anything wrong. If I did, please let me know so I can fix it. 
> 
> 2) Zemnian from the translator app on my phone. 
> 
> 3) This idea was kicked around on the discord server I'm on. So any other blind caleb fics you see are also amazing and you should go check them out
> 
> Tumblr (for however long that lasts): @woozlebucket


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